


Leave The Fire Burning

by Lambourn



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alex Manes Deserves Nice Things, Angst, Barebacking, Canon Compliant, Canon Relationships, Canon-Typical Behavior, Despite the trope there is plenty of consent here, Everyone loves Alex Manes, Except for Mr. Jones, Explicit Sexual Content, Fix-It of Sorts, Forrest Long is just a guy not the endgame for Alex, Forrest is just mentioned, Getting Back Together, I'm kinda harsh on Forrest I guess?, M/M, Michael Guerin Deserves Nice Things, Michael Guerin Needs a Hug, Minor Forrest Long/Alex Manes, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Past Relationship(s), Pining, Post-Season/Series 02, Sex Pollen, Top Alex Manes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:07:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25757851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lambourn/pseuds/Lambourn
Summary: Michael would like to blame this lab accident on Liz Ortecho, but he's trying to be better these days about taking responsibility for his own actions. Still, he wasn't prepared for Alex to show up before the effects wore off. He was really not prepared for the fall out from Alex getting exposed as well.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 124
Kudos: 335





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Notes on canon/spoilers for season two: Listen, I have no idea what to do about Mr. Jones and the Familiar Stranger plot, I feel like I haven't smoked up enough to come up with a good answer to that, so I'm leaving that out. And since the show hasn't mentioned the threesome again, well, neither will I.
> 
> THANK YOUS: First to ninswhimsy, for audiencing and keeping me motivated through the writing of this, thank you to my Discord for being so kind while I dropped bits on you guys as well, and final thank yous, to tasyfa for doing all the heavy lifting of beta-ing this monster. You guys are my village, and I need every one of you!
> 
> ETA: I guess I wasn't friendly to Forrest in this story, but I despite the two anons I received, I don't consider this an anti-Forlex story, just that I'm a malex writer and that's my focus. YMMV. Personally I think everyone who crosses Alex's path will fall in love with him and not really be happy with losing him.

In the back of his mind as he fought to hold onto his sanity, Michael blamed this entire disaster on Liz Ortecho.

If she had not left for California in the first place, if she had not taken a job in a closely-monitored laboratory that meant she was stuck with advising him through Facetime, if she hadn't dropped into a torrent of Spanish while Michael was titrating a sample of his attempt at finding a treatment to the debilitating headaches that the butyricol exposure had left Jenna Cameron with; well, Michael would not be cleaning up a mess both physically and metaphorically.

He wasn't a biochemist, but he was an alien genius and apparently incapable of standing by while his friends were in pain. With the lab at the school reduced to dust thanks to Max's sense of the dramatic, and Kyle skating on thin ice at the hospital after the original equipment theft, it fell onto Michael's shoulders to step into Liz's role.

The first step was the obvious.

He started with taking his own road trip. He headed to Las Vegas, ostensibly to get some space from Roswell in the wake of Maria leaving him and Forrest Long showing up as Alex's shadow everywhere. Arriving at the Wild Pony while Alex was having a date and with Maria behind the bar did tax his control, but not in the ways that everyone expected. In fact, it stung a little to realize everyone was holding their collective breath around him, waiting for him to revert to form and warm the drunk tank bunk.

As if liver damage and self-pity on a bar stool were his only means of coping with heartbreak.

However fairly he had earned the reputation over the years when he was living down to expectations, he was not the same person now. It wasn't just Isobel in his corner as his only friend, he had his brother Max back, and Rosa, and Sanders, Jenna, even Kyle now. Though it was awkward, he also had Maria and Alex. There were more reminders now as he laid on his thin Airstream mattress at night that he wasn't alone.

But that was fine. He could use that to his advantage, the cover he needed to disappear a few days a month and begin the process of putting together the funds he needed to build a new lab in his bunker. They needed a lab, and he told himself it wasn't just for picking up his dropped progress in rebuilding his ship. After all, in the last year the demands of Roswell had run from full resurrection to the study of alien proteins in blood products, and now the task was repairing the damage brought on by a Jesse Manes-inspired vendetta.

Vegas itself was an interesting experience. With his telekinesis, the roulette wheel was his to own, allowing peppered losses for camouflage. Chips poured into his hands, luring complete strangers to him, calling him a winner and wanting to rub him for luck. He'd never felt more like an alien outsider than he did when he was considered a talisman of good. When was the last time he was seen as the harbinger of good to anyone who knew him? Maybe to his mother when he took his first gasps of air when he entered the world, certainly not when he doomed her to a lock-down in a prison cell. The unrelenting echo of a self-destruct countdown as the final soundtrack on earth, what a dance partner he turned out to be.

Four careful days in the casino, a series of off-shore banking transfers and three shell corporations set up with Alex's help later, Michael had replaced all of the lab equipment lost in the explosion legally. The next step was his work to upgrade the power grid to the auto and salvage yard to support the new stress on it.

However, with all the shining new equipment and his alien reflexes at hand, nothing could save him from shattering a test tube vial.

"Try not to yell at me while I'm doing something delicate, Ortecho," Michael groused, turning on the overhead fans for ventilation while he reached for a trash bag to clean up his failed trial batch. His nose itched in response to the spilled serum.

"Since when are you so jumpy?" Liz shot back from the propped up phone screen and stared at him thoughtfully. From the screen of a cheap camera, Michael could still recognize the look of lightning-quick connections being made on her face. If anyone recognized the signs of withdrawal, it would be her. "Wait a second, did you stop drinking?"

"I didn't stop drinking, but I might have... slowed the frequency of it and the volume." Michael glanced down, mopping up the mess with a wad of paper towels. He reached up and brushed back an annoying curl from his eyes as he cleaned the hazard up. "It was messing with my focus. Some of us didn't get three degrees in this stuff, so I need all the help I can get to catch up to you, Liz."

It was one of the nebulous steps he was taking to be a better man.

Reserving having a drink to just a celebratory one, or having one controlled indulgence a week with Max during their brotherly bonding over having their hearts broken, was easier than Michael had thought. It didn't change anything inside him, but he could tell it was altering how his friends and family saw him now. He wasn't so easily dismissed as being lost in an angry spiral, and gradually the collectively held breath was released around him as he remained steady.

Drinking had never softened his anger, it just made him forget the roots that fed and nourished it. Growing up without a connection to his people, passing through the hands of addicts and quick-fisted bastards, the useless sacrifice of school he had made for his siblings, and then the deepest hurt, finding out the truth of his mother. Living in the bottle only muted the rage, it was time he learned to live with it.

"If I didn't love you Mikey, I would hate you for how quickly you picked up something I've made my life's work about," Liz sighed fondly, then glanced over her shoulder before lowering her voice, "I can't even blame this on you hatching from an egg."

"I was kept in an egg, I wasn't hatched from it," Michael paused, his thoughts going to his mother as they often did these days. Wading in the gulf of anger, there was the wave of grief. It washed over his head, stealing the breath from his lungs as he stepped off the deceptive sandbar of calm and into the fathomless deep of loss. He had that golden moment from Caulfield and the surprisingly emotional words in the diary of the late Eugene Manes III. But it wasn't enough. He wanted more.

Altruism might have motivated his project with Jenna and the butyricol side effects, but it wasn't the only purpose he had in studying a drug that locked up memories. If he could refine Liz's original serum to focus solely on memory retrieval, maybe he could finally remember those early, developmentally important years as a child on his planet with his mother.

Maybe he could add months and years to those treasured sixty seconds of unconditional love from Nora. The outpouring was so brief. It filled only a small glass inside the hollow, hardly a reservoir to tap while he shuffled along in this dry desert climate. Maybe if he had his own well of love to draw from, he wouldn't need to draw from other people and maybe, he would have something to offer someone in return.

 _"I don't doubt your capacity to love."_ Maria had said, but she did doubt something about him or else she might have had more trust in their ability to last.

Not that he blamed her, it was unlikely he would have been able to sit idly by as her boyfriend while she opened her arms wide to embrace a future madness willingly. Hell, he wasn't handling that well as a friend currently and he probably should acknowledge just how easy the transition had been for them to friendship.

The instinct he had had with Alex after Caulfield, to hold him at arm's length and to try to create as much distance as he could in their interactions to protect himself from falling back under Alex's spell, was very much absent when it came to seeing Maria now. He had slipped into a chiding banter with her, like what he had with Isobel, almost overnight. It probably meant she had been right all along.

"Well, I'm proud of you. For the not-drinking thing. I still hate you for basically completing my master's thesis in the last two months." Liz paused, before continuing tactfully, "You've been pretty focused on this, and I know a little bit about burying heartache in work, so if you want to talk-"

"I'm fine, Ortecho."

"That's what Maria says too."

Michael smiled humorlessly, pulling off his gloves to add to the trash. His hands itched slightly in the air, and he reached up to adjust the thermostat down in the bunker. "She would know, she's the psychic after all, future brain-damage be-damned." 

Both he and Liz were united on that front. After the work that had gone into repairing the cellular damage from Flint's bomb, casting aside the pollen-infused bracelet to delve deeper into her alien-inherited abilities that invited brain damage made zero sense to the practical-minded Liz. She had risked and lost her relationship with Max over trying to save people.

Liz saluted him sarcastically, before she lifted her eyebrow at him, "The other psychic, your sister Isobel disagrees. She says you're on this self-isolation martyr's kick, channeling all your man-pain into this lab."

He let the sound of double bagging his trash cover him cursing Isobel before he turned to face the phone again. "Ignore Iz, okay? We had a fight, and she's mad that I haven't caved and forgiven her yet."

"You, fighting with Max, trust me, I understand that." To Liz's credit, she only hesitated a second before saying his name while she tried to joke lightly. "But, you never fight with Iz."

"Roswell flipped upside down after you-" Michael switched his words smoothly, discarding 'left' without missing a beat, " _moved_ to California, what can I say? Max and I are now BFFs and Iz has the role of being my annoying, holier-than-thou sibling." He picked up his phone, bringing the screen closer to him.

"She's always been annoying, tell me why she's being annoying to you in particular." She watched him closely, moving in for the kill as he hesitated to answer, "Come on, Mikey, I need this friendship outlet, otherwise it's just me and in a lab with unlimited resources-"

"Do you think I look for excuses to be angry?" The honest response burst out from his lips, even as he had thought to change the subject. Damn it. Well, for a penny, for a pound, he thought, and clarified, "To stew alone in my man-pain for example."

The question shocked Liz into silence and uncharacteristic stillness. For a moment, he thought Facetime had frozen on their call, before she looked down, muttering softly, "Dios mios. She said that?"

"Yeah," Michael shrugged. The old hurt returned then, even stronger than it did when Isobel had first scolded him, as his focus slipped back to the fight. Punching rednecks brought a 'disappointed-in-you' sigh from Isobel. Not punching rednecks and turning down her offers to go out to bars for company also brought on the same disappointed sigh. He seemed to be wandering into the place of no win scenarios. "Not the first time it's been pointed out, and not just by Iz."

_You miss your injury because you want to hurt. Your anger made you feel safe._

His vision blurred as the perfect echo of Alex's words rang in his ears in the bunker. Goddamn it. Michael reached up to adjust the fan to blast cooler air on him as he pushed down both memories and flexed his bare hand. Just as his mother was never far from his thoughts, neither was Alex despite his best efforts. He blinked again, tuning back into Liz's voice on the phone.

"-- I think you have several good reasons to be angry, without needing to look for one. I used to want to be less angry, to box that part of me up because it was messy and it made people uncomfortable around me. But anger gives me information," Liz's smile became distant as she slipped into her own memory, "it tells me when something isn't right. Anger is the part of me that says I deserve better, and it moves me past apathy to change."

"I wish I could say Max was sorry- I mean, I know he misses you a lot. The guy gets really deep into his cups whenever Iz brings him a mint milkshake."

Liz brushed her hand against her eyes. "I miss him too. Does he? Does he ask about me?"

"He lets Iz ask me about you while he's nearby, because he always listens. He didn't understand why I wasn't pissed at you too at first, until I told him your research into synthetic nucleotide excision was the only reason Maria survived Flint's bomb. I know I told you to leave it alone, but you ignoring me saved Maria’s life. So yeah. I’m trying to be less of a hypocrite these days. I can’t thank you enough for that."

“I did that for me too. Maria’s family.” Her smile was watery in acknowledgment of Michael’s gratitude, before she cleared her throat and continued in a stronger voice, "You know Max lied to me as well and I didn't take it as a betrayal, because that was about seeking answers to his past. I've come to realize neither one of us will ever be sorry for what happened because it came down to a lack of trust. He saw my research as reckless, he didn't look past it to see how many safeguards and security measures I was taking. And you know what? I can understand that. His base instinct was fear of something happening to expose you guys, but it ran into mine, my fear of disappearing. Losing myself, and letting go of my dreams. I can handle rejection if it comes from the outside, I'll just work harder out of spite, but telling myself that I can't? Shutting myself down like that?"

This was the narrow path he walked with Liz and Max, where he could see both sides of the issues, from her saving Maria's life to Max's attempt to end Flint's life, Max's sense of reason all out of whack from his secret dosing on the serum.

"You know, I'm Switzerland here, right?" He held up his hand in surrender but grasped onto the subject change eagerly, "I will allow that Max made a mistake in blowing up your lab. He should have waited until he found out about the really reckless thing you did with Valenti's girlfriend before he freaked out. Thankfully they have characterized her spontaneous remission as a misdiagnosis since her condition was so rare."

"Gee thanks, Mikey," Liz bristled, before looking down at her hands.

"Come on, Ortecho, you know we got lucky there, no one wanted to look too closely at a miracle," Michael reasoned gently. He watched her soften slightly on the tiny screen, as he continued, "But you're right, the fact he blew up your lab without knowing about Stef means he didn't trust you. And yeah, I think he could have handled it better than a fire and explosives. I will tell you I've been arguing with Max for over ten years about the need to know more, and he fights me at every turn, and I share the risk of exposure with him! Just blend in is what he said to me, stop making waves, et cetera."

"And yet he's your BFF now?"

"Well you're not here, so the position was open," Michael teased, and wiped at his forehead. The air felt tight and clammy to him, even as he moved to stand directly under the fan for relief.

Liz smiled back in response, and then gestured to the surroundings of the bunker. "How does he feel about you recreating the lab?"

"He's not too warm and fuzzy about it, but I told him I was studying what the government was doing with the butyricol to help Cameron. Also, Kyle needs a place to monitor his heart function, and clearly the hospital is out. The risk of building this lab was measured against his self-interest." Michael rubbed at his jawline as sweat beaded at his forehead and felt his smile dipping down into self-deprecation as he thought about Max and the past. "Since my greatest ambitions in the last few years revolved around avoiding being charged with a felony, he's not worried I'll want a Nobel Prize."

"I can see why you're angry."

Michael looked away from her sympathetic gaze, holding back the urge to shrug. He reached up to scratch at an itchy shiver at the base of his head, lamenting to himself that Liz's sharp clear-eyed brain was both her best and worst quality.

"Michael, you're one hundred percent allowed to be angry. You gave up so much for your family-"

"And for what?" He shot back hotly, "I didn't go to college, I let Isobel believe it was me that killed those girls, and it fixed absolutely nothing. Noah moved in and married my sister, violating her in ways I wish I could kill him a thousand times over for, but I can't. So the stuff I did, that's the definition of a pointless sacrifice, in my opinion. Besides, you were right, there's nothing I could have learned in a classroom about what I really wanted to know. I'm over it, really."

Liz looked skeptically concerned on the tiny screen. "Yeah you look and sound over it."

"Yeah well, the shit storm Noah set off back then affected a lot of people. Like you and your family. I think I got off lightly if you think about it. The stuff that Isobel was put through by him in particular-"

"Lalalalala, no I'm not listening to you compare these things-" Liz plugged her fingers into her ears and smirked when he flipped her off in response. "But if you want to go down that road, we can."

Michael paused, suspecting there was a trap there but his thoughts were too slow to focus on it. "I don't know what you mean-"

There was something wrong with him he realized dimly at the moment. And judging by how warm he felt, it wasn't his way of dealing with anger.

"From what I can tell, everyone got some amount of comfort from learning about 1948, right? Isobel learned her mother escaped, had a child, and spent the rest of her life helping others on the reservation. Maria learned about her roots, about her grandma Patty and how she was a protected child that people sacrificed everything to save. And Alex learned that his great-uncle wasn't a monster like the rest of his family and wears his dog tags now proudly."

Michael's throat felt tight, his heart squeezed tight and small behind his rib cage as he listened to Liz recount the fruits of his search for his mother. His fingers numbly cranked the thermostat down further as he struggled to find a response, but Liz wasn't finished.

"What did you learn? Your mother had one year of peace on this planet before 70 more years of torment. I mean that sucks. I would be angry." Liz stopped abruptly, glancing at her watch, and cursed softly under her breath. "I gotta go but think about what I said before, Mikey, about maybe talking to someone about this, like Kyle, if you're worried about the alien thing. Send me your next round of tests too!"

"Liz, wait!" But the connection dropped, as Michael licked his dry lips, and finished to the blinking 'Call Ended' notification, "I don't feel so good."

The loud clatter of the fan blades from both the exhaust system and air conditioning unit registered faintly on his attention. The bunker was pumping in fresh air through the ventilation system, while the exhaust fans pulled out whatever contaminated fumes that were leftover from his unfortunate earlier accident in the closed space. He blinked again; his thoughts felt like slow molasses.

Grief, pain, anger, his three roommates that jockeyed for his attention on a daily basis bled from him freely until nothing was left. For a moment, Michael thought maybe he should be concerned as he leaned heavily against the table, but concern felt like a lot to muster through the apathy that settled over his shoulders.

Fuck, it was hot, even as the fan spun freely over his head. This was probably not good.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It gets a bit dirty in this chapter. NSFW.

There were more clattering noises filling his ears. It seemed important. Focus. He thought, focus, he had no idea how long he had been standing under the cooling unit. Was it five minutes or five hours?

Bang. Bang.

It wasn't the fan or the HVAC system working overtime this time.

"It's me, Guerin!"

Alex.

The banging started again, then the turn of the heavy metal cover rasped from above Michael's head. He had stopped locking the overhead hatch once he realized he wasn't hiding anything from Sanders. The old man had actually found his experiments and research into the crash data amusing, laughing gruffly about how much alike he was to Miss Nora. After a firm promise not to blow up the auto yard, Sanders had left Michael alone and redirected the customer service repair lane to be as far as possible from where the Airstream and the bunker resided.

Vaguely, he thought he probably had a good reason now to lock the hatch, that whatever he had spilled was clearly affecting him and might affect someone else, but his powers felt unfocused and clumsy. Once he saw the shadow of Alex turning to descend the ladder, he dropped that futile idea. He had never used his powers on Alex, and he never would.

Michael watched mutely as Alex climbed down, his cross-body bag against his back as his left foot confidently glided downward, and then less steady right foot followed. He made it to the bottom of the ladder, turned around with a pleased smile as he brushed his palms against his jeans.

Alex had changed in the wake of Jesse's death, in little and large ways. Michael loved seeing how freely Alex smiled now and how comfortable he seemed in his skin. Michael wasn't the only person who loved it though.

One look told Michael that Alex had plans, romantic plans. He recognized the dark wash jeans that cut attractively around Alex's ass but still allowed room for the prosthesis fitting as a quality above casual gear. His shoulders filled out a collared jewel blue shirt that he had rolled the sleeves up to his forearms. There was a glint of a tiny silver cuff earring shining from the dark glossy locks of Alex's styled hair. The final tell was the expensive musk filling Michael's nose even though he could tell from the dark shadow on Alex's jaw that he hadn't shaved since that morning.

The junkyard and his bunker were just a stop for Alex, on his way to see Forrest, probably for some romantic date. The type of date that most likely was going to end in the type of athletic sex that Michael was doing his best to forget about, even as his mind flashed one hundred frames of lived-reference across his eyelids. Damn him for not having had that hatch locked, and now he had several good, selfish reasons to absolutely lock it now, to trap Alex in with him.

The new fever continued to heat him, loosening the hold against bad ideas and nudging them into good ones. Except. Except no. He couldn't. Shouldn't.

"Guerin?" Alex snapped his fingers in front of him, his face creased in concern.

"Alex," Michael replied, a touch slow. Everything was slow, but his pulse, hammering adamantly in his ears and wrists and groin. Fuck, what had he done to himself. "What are you doing here?"

"You're still working on the butyricol effects for Jenna, right?" Alex didn't wait for Michael to respond, as he dug eagerly into his bag for a handful of papers. "I managed to find some of the sealed records from the trial the military ran on butyricol and post-trauma stress disorder. I had to print them since I couldn't download the data without leaving a trace I was there, but hopefully this will help-"

Michael watched Alex's mouth as he spoke, almost lost in how his lips came together as he pronounced 'butyricol'. His heartbeat whispered, Alex, Alex, Alex in his veins, but he had to ignore it. Tightening his grip on the table, he beat back the urge to reach out. He needed to move this along, let Alex be on his way before his compromised judgment made things worse between them. Fuck. Experience taught him that bodily shoving Alex back up the ladder would just end with Alex digging his heels in stubbornly, so he had to let this 'just friends' exercise that Alex did play out.

Licking his dry lips, Michael tried to remember how he did this, how he ignored the obvious when he saw Alex. "Managed to find? Sounds like you hacked it..."

"I might have found some security protocols deficient in protecting proprietary information."

"You shouldn't have done that, you're risking too much with your job-"

"I'm standing in a bunker full of equipment that I helped you buy with gambling winnings that you deliberately dodged paying taxes on, so I'm going to ignore you right now." Alex raised his eyebrow, and swept his hand toward the mass spectrometer and other humming machines in a smug answer. He waited, suspicion slowly overtaking expectation, tugging his eloquent brows together into a frown, as Michael stayed silent in response. "Okay, what's wrong with you?"

"Nothing. I'm fine." Michael reached up to mop away the sweat on his face and gritted his teeth as a wave of pleasure swept from spine to his toes. Move it along. Move to a safe distance. "Thanks for this, but I'm sure Forrest is expecting you-"

However, out of control he felt now, he was proud of himself for saying the name Forrest without a hint of jealousy or judgment. Nearly every day after that night at the Wild Pony, Michael was actually grateful for Forrest, that he was able to be the sort of patient, kind and loving man that Alex needed in the wake of his father's death. It wasn't that Michael didn't want to try, it was just rapidly clear he had his own feelings to comb through with Jesse Manes finally dead. Alex might have felt free, but everywhere Michael looked, he couldn't help but see reminders of his mother's prison, from a spider-spiral of broken auto glass at Sanders to the innocuous beeping of his alarm clock that brought back memories of Caulfield. On the heels of that memory came the knowledge that Jesse Manes had died with full military honors. 

Disaster had struck at the Crash Con but yet, justice didn't feel fully served. Perhaps it never would, living in a town with a newly commissioned statue in Jesse’s likeness. With the path to the stars closed, it meant staying in Roswell, figuring his shit out. 

Until he did, Michael wasn't good for anyone, let alone himself.

Alex tilted his head, those dark eyes that knew Michael entirely too well narrowed in thought before he lifted his wrist to look at his watch, "I left myself some time before meeting him, because I was curious to see what you were up to down here. Care to give me a grand tour of what my help with your ill-gotten gains bought?"

That was the worst idea in the world, but it was funny, the flutter and jagged stab of his anger from earlier was gone. In its place was desire, his longtime companion whenever Alex was around. He missed his anger. Anger really was safer. Fuck everything and Liz Ortecho distracting him into carelessness. This was her fault. No. He wasn't doing that anymore, he'd clearly brought this on himself in so many ways.

"Not much to show you."

"No? Once upon a time your ship was the center of attention down here," Alex commented, his eyes settling on the covered canvas drop cloth in the corner before turning to take in the purring machines lined up against the far wall.

"Yeah, well, I was looking for my mom and I found her," Michael ignored how Alex still winced at her mention, and continued without heat, "the ship was a pipe dream, there's no reason to go anywhere now." He shrugged, taking a few needed steps away from Alex. Distantly he noted that his grief only vaguely brushed at the hot hyper-sensitive state he was in, instead of taking completely over as it did in the past.

With the printouts still in hand, Alex moved toward a pair of whiteboards to drop the gathered information on a table stacked with folders from Project Shepherd. Michael bit his lip, holding himself in place, as Alex frowned in front of the second board. The feeling of overexposure increased as he watched Alex's too-clever dark eyes take in his work on the whiteboard with interest. Having Alex appreciate his intelligence was a two-edged blade, everything he wanted as a teenager but couldn't have as an adult. 

The itch to draw nearer was driving him mad as he dug his fingernails into the meat of his palm.

"This looks like Liz's serum. Are you looking to -" Alex jerked his head toward Michael, "I don't know much about biochemistry, but I do understand amplification models. You're outlining a theory of isolation and magnitude on this board. Are you trying to increase the potency of her serum?"

"Tryin' to, in regard to how it impacts memory recall, but I haven't been successful." Michael licked his dry lips, and gestured toward the bagged trash and cleaning supplies. "I was working on a theory about how her serum and the butyricol work in opposition, but I ruined an experiment earlier, and I'm still in the midst of cleaning it up. Anyway, I should get back to it, and you've got plans with your boyfriend- "

"You know you kind of look like shit right now."

"Gee, thanks, you really know how to flatter a guy-"

He rolled his eyes, but cut Michael off easily, "Have you had anything to eat today? Maybe you should sit down, consume something other than bourbon and I can finish cleaning this up-"

Alex kept talking, his voice fading into the background for Michael, as he ignored the gentle attempts to herd him away from the rest of the bunker and ignored the bait about Forrest. It was like Alex's superpower, ignoring all the signs that hinted at danger. Michael had a flash of 17-year-old Alex, buckling down on being visible with his fuck-off makeup and jewelry, daring the bullies to cross his path instead of turning himself invisible.

The remembrance broke as Michael realized Alex was moving deeper into the room, toward the lab bench where Michael had been working on the spilled failure.

"No!" He moved without thinking, stepping in front of Alex and grabbing him by the shoulders to halt his movement. His fingers touching the soft silk of Alex's shirt sent another wave of nerve kicking sensation down his spine, settling heavily in his jeans as his cock filled, low level interest rocketing in to firm resolve. He couldn't stop himself from curling his hands around the shirt, stroking the satin smooth fabric absently. Alex stared at him in surprise, as Michael lowered his voice, to repeat, "You really need to go, Alex."'

It was so small. Almost unnoticeable. He was used to seeing Alex's gaze drift from his eyes down to his mouth. That meant less than nothing in Michael's experience, looking and then not following through, were key steps in their very well established dance of the last eleven years. They were both guilty of it, although Alex used to get so angry with himself over 'the tell' he would retreat into cold cutting words for distance. It caught Michael by surprise now, to feel Alex pressing into Michael's hands, instead of pulling away.

Dating the town historian and openly performing love songs about men had apparently driven off that self-hating habit of Alex’s. Another tick in the column of cosmically bad timing.

Michael told his hands to let go even as he felt Alex swaying closer. "Fuck, okay. I'm an idiot and you were right. I haven't had a drink, but I think there is something wrong with me. My little lab accident is affecting me right now."

"How is it affecting you?" Alex reached up toward Michael's face, touching the bead of sweat on his forehead. The bubble broke, streaking down his face but Alex kept his hand in place, rubbing away the damp track as Michael swallowed hard. "You never get sick, but you feel hotter than normal."

Wanting to kiss Alex wasn't a new symptom.

Feeling like _Alex wanted him to kiss him_ had to be from the spilled serum clouding his thoughts.

"I feel hot, and um, uncomfortable. Nothing I can't handle, but you, you need to go before this affects you too." This was step one in his work on figuring out who he wanted to be, maintaining boundaries in friendship even if it was challenging to his fear of abandonment. Learning to halt the steam-rolling path his insecurity always took straight into anger. Learning the difference between healthy space and being dropped completely. Learning to be friends with his exes, as hard as it was. Learning that it was so fucking hard, that he had to forgive himself for having to skip that first step and leave the Wild Pony early on certain open mic nights. 

"I'm not leaving you here alone suffering from some unknown side effect, so try again." Alex stated calmly.

He tenderly swept a damp curl back from Michael's eyes sweetly tucking it behind his ear. It was Michael's turn to sway forward, his gaze intent on Alex's mouth, his veins thrumming with need. It was only at the last moment, as he caught sight of the glint of the earring, the reminder of how Alex was living his life fully without Michael's bullshit, that he was able to turn his mouth away from kissing Alex. His aborted move grazed Alex's jaw with a whisper of a touch before he jerked himself away.

"Please, please you gotta go, I can't-"

"If I had exposed myself to some experimental compound that could kill me, would you leave me here alone?"

"Not gonna die," Michael replied with a whimper of a laugh as he placed a few more feet between them. "But this could affect you too-"

"Maybe it already has," Alex cut in and turned away from studying Michael to glance at the thermostat on the bunker wall. "I'm starting to feel really warm too. I thought you might have had the heat on for some reason, but you've got it set at 62 degrees. I should be freezing." Alex reached up toward the collar of his silk shirt to thumb a pair of buttons open, revealing his collarbone and the chain of Tripp's dog tags resting on the bare hint of his sparse dark chest hair.

"Fuck."

"Is that another symptom?" Alex raked his gaze down Michael's frame with curiosity, lingering at the places where sweat had darkened Michael's thin, well washed t-shirt, down to his jeans where there was a more noticeable bulge, the shadow of a strained zipper denim. “Looks like it is.”

That turned the dial from feeling exposed to feeling flat out naked. Increased pulse, increased internal thermostat, heightened arousal, Michael's mind quietly noted as effects. A feeling of free-fall without consequences, but sometimes he had that from just being around Alex in general. He didn’t know what he would do if Alex touched him again.

"I don't know, maybe. I was working on inhibitory neurotransmitters, trying to dial back the response that releases toxins related to pain with Jenna's headaches, to see if there was a connection between pre- and postsynaptic neuronal processes-"

"You're saying you released a feel-good neurotoxin into the air down here."

That. That was not fair. He couldn't help but wonder if the pulse of attraction toward Alex had a lineal limit or if he would always feel it strengthen. That razor sharp brain following Michael's work murdered a few more walls of his self-control. He took another deep breath, even though he was sure that wouldn't make the problem any better. "Seems like it. So, it's unlikely to kill me, no one has ever died of blue balls, and uh, you should really call Forrest."

"You're right, I should let him know I'm not going to make it."

"What!? No, I mean, because if you are feeling like I feel right now," Michael moved further back from Alex, as he pulled his sweat-sticky shirt away from his skin. Step one healthy friendship boundary, he reminded himself glumly, which sucked but he still had some semblance of control to hold himself back from spoiling theirs. "Call him, so he can, um he can help you out, and I can wait it out-"

"You were pretty worried about contagion earlier when it came to me, but now you want me to expose someone else to this," Alex observed smoothly, before raising his eyebrow. "Shouldn't we keep this contained to just you and me?"

"I don't know; I just- I don't want anyone else to get hurt. You've got to know Alex, I've caused you enough problems, I don't want to cause you more." This shouldn't be so hard to understand. Maybe the changes he was trying to make in the serum batch affected more than just impulse control. Basic cognition was at risk. How could Alex not understand this?

Alex nodded to himself, and started unbuttoning more of his shirt. "Let's talk about these problems you've caused me then, I feel hot, you feel hot. You're, what, aroused now? Like you're one step away from feeling something so good and you want it? Does that about sum it up for you? Because that's how I feel."

"What are you-" Michael stopped and stuttered, because the question was rhetorical as he watched Alex move down the middle of his chest, button by button slipping from his fingers, all the way down revealing tanned and toned skin until his shirt hung openly. Along with performing his music live, Alex had apparently joined a gym in his journey to live a more authentic life. "Okay you're really not thinking this through, I'm guessing this drug is hitting you a little harder than me."

"I don't know about harder, but I'm thinking sweating through this shirt would ruin it, and it's brand-new."

"Right, you bought it for your date." Past sins, he was paying for his past sins with this torture, but Alex had clearly lost his mind because of whatever Michael had spilled. It was so difficult not to just fall toward him, every cell in his body reminded him just how good it was with Alex. But that meant putting his own needs above others, and he was trying to be better. 

"A date," Michael repeated, both to himself and Alex, "with a guy who is not me, and maybe, um if you don't want to expose him to this, you should give him a heads up about what happened, so he doesn't get the wrong idea, for you blowing him off."

"You're really worried about me, aren't you?" Alex slipped off the rest of his shirt, and stepped closer to Michael who backed up against the wall of the bunker in return. "It's sweet, but you're harboring some misconceptions here. Forrest is just a friend."

"A friend you're already having sex with though, I'm not blind, Alex."

"Yeah well, but it's not serious for either of us. I had some very nice dates with him, but realized pretty early on it wasn't going anywhere past 'nice' and so did he. So now it's just hooking up. Friends with benefits." Alex smiled gently, but held up his hands harmlessly. "So you don't have to worry about some jealous boyfriend coming after you if you want to come closer, because I definitely want you to come closer..."

Clarity. It was a very brief moment for Michael considering the stress his internal systems were under, but he finally got it. Alex wasn't worried because this wasn't going to mean anything. Ah well. At the moment he felt entirely too good and too tired to fight against what he wanted, tomorrow after all was soon enough for regrets.

His silence seemed to register on Alex at last, as Alex held onto his discarded shirt with his fingertips, a shade of insecurity crossing his face. "Unless you don't want to. It's just, we're both dosed with this, seems silly to suffer here, standing five feet apart from one another when we could take care of each other."

"You know I want to, that's not the problem," Michael replied quietly, before finding the edges of his tee-shirt with his thumbs, and then started to drag the damp fabric up over his head. "I just don't want this to be something you regret."

"I have wasted too much of my life on regret, I'm not wasting anymore," Alex brought his hands down to his waistband, popping the top of his fly open, before looking up through the dark locks of his hair at Michael. "It's good to know you're still into me. This would be awkward if you weren't."

Michael mirrored his movements, working open his heavy belt buckle and tugging down the zipper on his jeans, biting his lip at the sudden release of pressure against his cock. "Always into you, just ... I just don't want to mess you up, you're doing so good, Alex," without me, he finished silently.

"You're not going to mess me up, don't worry."

The confirmation that this wasn't a concern to Alex bit a little at his heart, consuming another piece silently, but he could ignore it. He gave himself permission at last, he could do this for Alex, with Alex one more time and survive. So with that, he caught the heel of his boot against the edge of his lab table to tug it off, before kicking himself free of his second boot. He gripped the edges of his jean waistband, and with letting go of his conflict he allowed himself to just enjoy the moment before the urgent need returned. Alex smirked at him, as Michael stumbled a little in his eagerness to step free of the denim before Alex casually toed off his own left shoe.

Michael closed the space between them, offering his hand to Alex for balance as he worked his shoe free from the prosthetic blade. The hot, possessive grip Alex had on his arm calmed the last of his nerves. Michael let Alex pull him in even closer, offering his mouth up to Michael. This time he didn't miss, as he kissed Alex firmly, and took over tugging those criminally flattering jeans down Alex's legs.

He made a muffled sound of delight, as he balanced his weight against Michael's arm, stepping free of his jeans. "God it feels so good to get those off," Alex mumbled against his mouth. "It still feels like a million degrees in here."

"Yeah, to me too, but you feel- you feel so good," Michael couldn't pull himself away from kissing Alex, as he stood in his briefs and pressed his cock against Alex. The black fabric of Alex's boxer briefs showed the very interested outline of Alex. "I don't know what you want, but-"

"Sure you do," Alex licked delicately at Michael's mouth before deepening the kiss. His hands came up to bury his fingers into Michael's hair, holding him in place as he choreographed his intent in the kiss. He broke it, letting Michael gasp for air as he rested his forehead against his. "Is there some place more comfortable than the floor to do this?"

"Got a couch toward the back."

"Good, that should do for round two."

Michael kissed at his jaw, pressing his tongue against the grain of Alex's stubble. Alex not shaving as religiously as he did in the past was still one of his favorite discoveries. "Round two?"

"Round two," Alex confirmed, humming at the kiss, "Round one, I kinda want to have you right here, against your lab bench, though the table is a little high for what I had in mind-" He dropped his hands to run down Michael's back gliding easily over the sheen of sweat, curving his palms over the thin cotton briefs, long fingertips ghosting against the fabric to brush lightly at Michael's hole.

"It lowers!" he blurted out quickly, his voice breaking embarrassingly on the contact. Already his skin felt oversensitive, his body vibrating in anticipation of Alex, Alex, Alex. Michael ground backward, unable to help from chasing that touch, blushing at the interested glance from Alex. "All the tables are adjustable. I um, I figured once Liz came home, she's not as tall as I am-"

"Hmmm, so I can bend you over this table?" Alex queried, his voice quiet and commanding.

Rhetorical, but effective. Michael concentrated for a moment, releasing the pins on the table legs, and dropped the surface several inches downward. He turned submissively into Alex's urging hands, moving to face the table and then lowered his chest on the lukewarm surface. Too eager, too wound up for any thoughts of shame over how quickly he offered himself up. With his fingertips, he reached backward to grasp the elastic of his underwear and started to pull it downward, Alex's hands took over with their own eagerness to pull them down to his ankles and off completely.

The cool metal and plastic of Alex's right foot nudged his ankles, pushing them further apart, spreading his stance wider against the table. The muscles in his back rippled downward with effort, as a fresh spark of strain pulled at his hamstrings.

"You look good like that," Alex observed, approvingly. Michael turned his head to look back at Alex, only to have him push him forward gently against the table and then pressed both of Michael's hands flat against the surface.

Fuck. The silent request of 'keep them there' had Michael hardening past discomfort. He wasn't going to last. This might actually kill him.

There was a soft rustle of cloth, and then he felt Alex's bare skin cover his back. Next to Michael's face, a packet of lube and a condom dropped into view on the table. "Only brought the one, so I will have to make this count, unless you have more down here?"

"No, um, never needed those down here.”

"So this is a first?" Alex asked, kissing down the knobs of Michael's spine before leaving a gentle bite on the swell of his cheek.

"Yeah, a first. Maybe a last if you don't hurry up-"

Alex laughed delighted at the threat, but made no move to reach for the lube. His hands, big and warm, with newly rough calluses from playing guitar rubbed possessively over Michael's ass. The faint mark from the bite already faded as he traced his thumb over where his teeth had nipped. Confidently he ran his hands forward and around to grip Michael's cock as he moved his hips closer, his own cock slipping forward to rest against Michael's hole.

The sound Michael made was half keen, half moan, as Alex tightened his hold on him, before brushing his thumb lightly over the head of Michael's cock, smearing pre-cum over his fingers. The considering click of Alex's tongue in his ear, as he observed lightly, "You're really leaking here, do you think that's from exposure to that serum?"

Michael shifted in need, squirming under the teasing touch. He could feel just how close Alex's dick was, bumping lightly against his rim. He wasn't the only one near the edge, pre-cum slicking between his cheeks. "Alex, please, fuck me."

God, he had nearly forgotten how sex flipped the switch in Alex, who used to be unsure in so many matters outside of bed but never failed to have full control in it. More and more, Alex was finding that same surety in life, but here, how he held himself with absolute confidence in knowing how to handle Michael was one of his most familiar memories of Alex.

He had no defense against this and he was only going to get it once more.

Taking pity on him, Alex finally reached for the packet of lube that was still in Michael's sight line. The crackle of plastic helped build the anticipation, until the cold, slick touch against his ass startled him forward. "Sorry, sorry," he apologized in Michael's ear, his fingers gentle as he urged Michael back toward him. "You're so hot right now, you're burning up, forgot how cold that must feel to you in contrast."

He could feel Alex's fingers tracing the rim of his hole, a steady thoughtful circle around to smooth the lubricant over the outside, before Alex eased his finger slowly inside. God. It had been so long since he'd done this with anyone, let alone Alex. Michael couldn't help but tense a little, the muscle memory of what to do, how to react, far away and clumsy. The long uneven exhale Michael released, didn't go unnoticed by Alex, who leaned forward to press his lips on his neck, murmuring, "You can do it, open up for me."

The care and confidence in Alex's voice buoyed Michael. He wanted to be good and follow the encouragement, to give Alex what he wanted. To be what Alex wanted, always. The past failures on that aside, for both of them, he could do this. Except once the doubt settled in, the tension re-knit in his muscles as he worked to push the specter of the past away.

Alex kissed his neck again, working to soothe the renewed tension away, and pressed that one finger deep and unrelentingly inside of Michael. "That's one."

Sweat, maybe not sweat stung Michael's eyes as he thumped his head lightly against the table after Alex angled his finger downward to nudge at his prostate. The distraction of the nerve-crackle whip of pleasure down his senses hid the press and addition of a second finger.

"Good, you're taking my fingers so well," Alex praised, his touch remaining careful as he slowly opened Michael up, backing down a finger at the first hint of stress, before continuing until he had four fingers working to stretch Michael. In and out, he fucked his fingers in a firm, meditative rhythm, stroking downward against Michael's prostate before upward to widen his fingers.

Keeping his hands flat on the table, giving himself completely over to Alex and what Alex wanted from him sent Michael's thoughts down into a thick syrupy slowness.

There was no more room for doubts in him in the face of determined desire.

Just be this. Be good. He had been trying so hard to be this over the last few months, stumbling through his interactions without a guide, barking his shins against disappointed expectations, tripping over the past failures, it was so hard to be good. Now, though, it was easy.

Vaguely he felt the withdrawal of Alex's touch, his hole felt open and loose, clenching on nothing, those long clever fingers gone. He made a small noise of dismay in his throat, until the crinkle of the condom wrapper registered and then the blunt, unyielding pressure returned.

Alex's hand on his hip anchored him, strong and present. Pressing against him, soon became pressing into Michael. Even with the care Alex took, there was a stutter of resistance, as if his body forgot just what to do. Alex's hand tightened on the curve of his hip bone, and drove forward. In, in, in until he could feel the brush of Alex's pubic hair against him.

Then Alex waited.

Breathing through the penetration, the burn of the unfamiliar was quickfire and gone, leaving only impatient need in its wake. Michael rocked his hips backward against Alex's solid weight, only to have Alex move his hands to grip Michael's wrists, stilling the aborted movement. "You're so tight, you do that and I'm gonna come," he warned, dark and serious in Michael’s ear.

"Please..."

"Been waiting a long time to do this, don't want it to be over so quick. Be good for me, okay?" After Michael nodded, overwhelmed but agreeable, Alex let go of his wrists, returning to grip Michael's hips and began to move. In and out, the rhythm was at first easy and unvaried, whispering brushes near his prostate. The first hard, deliberate thrust tore a cry out of Michael's throat. His hands slapped on the lab table but stayed in place, obedient still to Alex.

The noise set something loose in Alex, he picked up strength, fucking Michael in a hard, unrelenting pace that had him making tiny, hitching moans in reaction. Before Michael could formulate actual words and beg for it, Alex moved his right hand from Michael's hip down to wrap around Michael's cock, stroking firmly in counterpoint.

Michael lifted his head backward, looking for Alex as his orgasm neared, needing to see him. It was going to be over soon, and he didn't want it to be. The impossibility of this moment, having Alex like this, having it last forever was fantasy. But the anchor for later was encoded in his memory by the sight of Alex, looking focused and reverent over Michael's body, as he chased his own pleasure deep, deep inside.

How long could he balance on the hairs edge of holding back. He'd wavered there for hours it felt like, since the moment of hearing Alex's voice call out from over the bunker door. "Close," Michael reluctantly warned.

"Mmm, me too, come for me. Michael!"

His name on Alex's lips, still such a rare occurrence, was more than enough to push him over. Come surged up, splashing over Alex's fingers, on the lab table. The shock wave that started deep inside him, where Alex was, kept rolling through him. Oh god, Alex wasn't stopping even as Michael's body gave him everything.

Past the boiling point, vapors, intangible transmutation of matter from one state to the next. His state was constant though, unchanging, he was Alex's. All he could do was accept it, welcome the tattoo of the physical on his body the same way it was etched on his heart.

"God, so good, you feel so good-" Alex praised him breathlessly, before Alex leaned forward, his chest covering Michael's back, his hand finding the sweat soaked curls to tug Michael's mouth toward him. He took Michael's lips in a messy open-mouth kiss, stuttering his breath as he came inside him.

The lazy, slow-to-react sensations floated in Michael as he did his best to return the kiss with as much uncoordinated enthusiasm as he was capable of as Alex clutched at his body greedily. Those long, musician-clever fingers ran up and down Michael's body, tracing senseless patterns on his sweat-slick skin as they traded open-mouth kisses.

Finally, Alex let out an exhausted sigh, and brought his hand down to where he was softening inside the condom, tracing the slick and puffy edges of where Michael surrounded him with his fingertips to grab at the edges of latex. The gentle, teasing touch sent a shiver down Michael's body, as he let out a soft protest as Alex began to pull out of him and then disposed of the condom in the trash with a quick tie off. Higher brain function was starting to come back online for Michael, and with it, the realization that this could be over soon.

The air in the bunker already felt cooler to him, even if it was heavy with the scent of rain and come. Whatever the half-life of the spilled serum was, it looked like the worst of the overheating had left Michael, leaving in its place cold and emptiness. Michael turned around to lean against the lab table with shaky legs, watching as Alex cleaned up roughly with a wad of takeout napkins from Michael's last order from the Crashdown.

The gel that artfully styled Alex's hair had retreated into sweaty clumps, but he still stood gloriously bare, except for his socks in Michael's bunker. The old post-coital bolt hadn’t set in yet, maybe it never would, as Alex made no move to pick up his clothing from the floor. Michael moved his eyes down the slope of Alex’s chest, lingering on his softening cock that hung between his strong thighs, memorizing the sight. Nothing deterred from the perfect makeup of Alex in Michael's opinion, the corded chiseled musculature of his arms on full display, the silver gleam of his prosthesis, it all only added to the overall picture. The physical strength mirroring the solid ground of emotional strength that Alex had found in the last year. 

Life was finally treating Alex kindly and it showed.

It was a view that Michael had to store up and absorb to preserve for later, because he knew he wasn’t a part of that. Alex caught sight of his gaze, as he straightened up, and whatever he saw on Michael's face caused a smile to bloom over his face. "Are you back to your senses over there?"

"No," slipped out before Michael realized what he was saying. He pushed himself off the corner of the lab table to stand fully upright and then closed the scant space between them again. The divots of muscle on Alex's hips made for the perfect place to rest his palms, Alex's dark gaze switched from startled to intent again as Michael caught his mouth in a kiss. The answering response from Alex started friendly, but quickly picked up passion as Michael deepened the kiss.

He broke the kiss with a gasp for air, disbelievingly, "Fuck, you're still- ?"

"I'm still," Michael confirmed, not letting Alex clarify. The come down weight of his adrenaline crash was picking up speed, pressing down on him. Stacks of bricks tottering precariously over his lungs, ready to crush him into dust when it was over. It was probably a hopeless gambit, if Alex was sobering up from the lab spill, but Michael couldn't help but try. Anything to chase the chill of reality away. "I think you promised me a round two?"

Alex groaned softly in answer, "Your little science experiment has made you insatiable." Instead of declining, Alex wrapped his arms back around Michael, sliding his hands down to test where Michael was still open and slick from the lube earlier. "Seriously? Round two?"

"Yeah, still feel ... still feel on fire and empty for you." Michael's confession pulled another sound of desire from Alex. He let Michael guide him in to moving, both of them on wobbly legs, across the bunker to the plain, beige couch that Kyle had donated to the cause of 'rest' and the dorm fridge that contained water. Alex sat down first, before Michael scooted as close as possible, slipping a leg over his lap with care for the prosthesis on his right leg.

"Only had the one condom," Alex remarked, disappointment heavy in his voice.

"I don't care, if you don't care," Michael replied, kissing the soft silky spot of skin just behind Alex's ear that he had long ago staked out as his favorite. A microcosm of Alex, vulnerable and sensitive but when given a certain type of attention, provoked intense reaction. Like now.

Alex clenched his fingers in Michael's curls, drawing back Michael's mouth away from his neck to clarify, "Do you mean-"

"Yeah, yeah if you want. I know you're clean, even if I could catch something, plus it's not like you can get me pregnant." He met Alex's shocked but desire-dark gaze, and something about the cover of this drug-addled encounter pressed Michael into honesty. "And even if you did, kids were always the plan for me with you anyway."

The slow stunned blink only lasted a minute before Alex visibly set aside that disclosure and kissed Michael, a shade harder than normally, sloppy and off-center until Michael brought up his hands to stroke guiding palms against the stubble of Alex's jaw. The hum of pleasure rumbled, unidentified between them, then Alex bit down on Michael's lower lip to break the kiss. "Seriously, what mad science were you playing with down here, it had to be about more than headaches and inhibitory neuro-whatevers."

"Inhibitory neurotransmitters," Michael corrected. He used his telekinesis to bring the second packet of lube over from the table to slap into his hand before offering it Alex. "Whatever it was, it's not done with me yet. I hope you're not done with me yet either."

"I'm not, just," Alex stuttered softly in concern before he reached up to lay his palm on Michael's forehead, testing the temperature. "I don't feel like a million degrees anymore, but this must be a bit more stubborn for your system than mine. You let me know if you start to feel anything other than these feel good vibes, okay?" He waited until Michael nodded, before shifting Michael to lay him down on the couch to kiss him.

The second time was slower and more careful, but despite the pace, the details kept escaping Michael. He tried drawing out every kiss, every touch between them, tucking them deep into his mind. A treasure trove of hoarded memories were caught, held, labeled and stored as 'the best' but then overwritten by some new feeling. The flashes of his legs held apart by Alex's long fingers on the couch. The weight of Alex above him, holding him down on earth, fuck Newton’s theory on gravity. The shared delighted shock of feeling Alex slide into him bare. Watching Alex's face this time, focused with his lips soft and bitten as he kept glancing at Michael's eyes, then down to where they were joined, in awe.

The second time was slower, and the third time, the third time was probably too much for Michael, but that didn't stop him from nodding at Alex's questioning glance afterwards. Yes, yes he still needed Alex. He was sore, wrung out in every muscle of his body, but he welcomed the assumption the madness was still in place.

Alex rolled off the couch gingerly and looked up at him with a tired but wicked smile, then he bent his head to lap up the traces of come on Michael’s stomach. His abdominal muscles trembled under Alex’s soft, thorough licking, before Michael let out a sharp inhale as Alex guided Michael’s slowly hardening cock into his mouth. 

Fuck. The soft, wet suction contrasting with sharp protest of over stimulation. Weakly, Michael threaded his fingers in through Alex’s ruined dark locks to ground himself as Alex skillfully swallowed him down. It was too much and still not enough. Helpless hitching sounds of need escaped Michael's dry throat but his face was wet with tears by contrast. The nudge of Alex's thick fingers filling him, pushing the mix of come and lube back inside him sent Michael over, coming with a weak sputter in Alex's warm welcoming mouth.

This time there was no escaping the truth. He was done. Empty again. They were done. The interlude of intimacy was closing between them and the shivers, the shivers didn't stop this time.

"Hey, hey," Alex crooned to Michael, his voice wrecked and raspy from sucking him, those beloved dark eyes filled with concern meeting Michael's wet gaze. Without hesitation, he pushed himself off the floor to the couch, groaning in the effort, before he pulled Michael towards him with grasping, uncoordinated hands. "What's wrong? What do you need? You don't feel so warm-"

What little composure Michael was holding onto was gone in the face of how worried Alex was. Big, shoulder shaking sobs racked him as he found himself enveloped in Alex’s arms. The last time he had cried, he had done it against the unforgiving side of a customer’s car, lost in the what-ifs of having been adopted by old man Sanders. 

This time was so much worse. Living in the what-ifs of Alex. 

Guilt built inside as he kept trying to stop the tears, and failed. God fucking damnit it was bad enough he had probably manipulated this situation to last longer than it needed to, but this breakdown was probably the greater sin. Crying into the neck of his ex-boyfriend was the opposite of a friends with benefits hook up due to some sex serum and it wasn’t fair to Alex that he was fucking this up. There was a less than zero chance of Alex leaving the bunker now if Michael couldn’t get this under control.

Alex seemed to realize he was past the point of words, and just kept rubbing his hand up and down Michael’s back, trying to reassure him, “Let it out, it’s okay, you’re okay, whatever it is, we can fix it.”

As it was, Michael had more experience in choking down tears than letting them out, so that after a long moment he was able to swallow a sob. Grade A asshole for enjoying this too much, god help him. He let himself lean back into Alex’s touch and then broke away with a gruff, hoarse cough of embarrassment, “Okay that was new, haven’t cried after sex since that time I tried to Netflix and chill with some girl to ‘The Fault in Our Stars’.” He turned, catching Alex’s unimpressed look, and shrugged, brazening past the awkwardness, “I thought it was about space.”

“Well, you sound back to normal.” Alex awkwardly turned on the couch, shifting on his prosthesis to open the dorm fridge for two bottles of water. He pressed a bottle of water into Michael’s hand, before drinking deeply from his own. 

“Yeah, but forget about me, how do you feel?” Michael tore his eyes away from watching Alex’s throat work, to sip lightly from his water bottle. 

“Exhausted, but a million times better that it doesn’t feel so hot to me. If you could figure out how to remove that side effect, you could make a killing bottling that stuff.” Alex rested his head back on the couch, his eyes dipping down to take in their mutual nudity with a small smile of pleased effort. “More importantly though, I feel like you should help me up the ladder so we can lay down in your bed and I can take off my leg.”

“You want to stay?”

Alex frowned a little, puzzled at the question, “Yeah, I want to stay. I want to be sure you’re okay, it hit you harder than it hit me. I’d like to be sure it’s out of your system and like you won’t drop dead on the 12 hour mark. And you can watch me for the same reason, although I suppose if you want me to call Kyle to come over, we could make it a slumber party-”

The brief moment of hope lit inside, even though he both knew better and wanted better for Alex. Still he was too tired to argue against something he wanted for once, so Michael finished his water before gingerly getting to his feet. The aches in his body reminded him just how he had spent his time, as he bent to pick up their underwear and shirts. “You make a good point, and yeah, no need for Kyle. I mean if this stuff has a second wind, I think he’d be pretty traumatized.”

“You say traumatized, I say he’d be jealous,” Alex joked, using Michael’s offered hand for balance as he pulled his boxer briefs back on, before stooping to gather his jeans, and his cellphone with the other. “Leaving out the heat stroke part of that, that was...wow, Michael, just wow.”

Michael discarded a dozen responses, from ‘the sex was epic’ to ‘you’re welcome, tip your waitress’ before finally, in the interests of preserving this precious peace between them, he settled on, “You weren’t so bad yourself.” Michael slowly followed Alex up out of the bunker into the shockingly cold night, watching him carefully in case he needed steadying.

The day and afternoon had slipped away in a fever dream, and now darkness had fallen fully, with the moon high in the sky over Sanders’ Auto. Michael held open the door of the Airstream for Alex, looking down at his phone lock screen. No new messages, no missed calls. Outside of Liz’s call and Alex’s visit, no one had checked in with him. His current fight with Isobel had eliminated her daily call until he apologized. It reminded him of another call, as he followed Alex inside the trailer to find him already naked again and reaching through the tiny curtain to start the shower running.

The wadded up jeans and discarded shirts in his arms almost dropped to the floor. 

“What?” Alex asked, almost defensively as Michael watched him expertly work the ins and outs of the trailer water hook up. He sat down on the plastic step stool that Michael kept to reach the wiring for the radio and electrical in the front cab and started working on the seal of his prosthesis for removal. “Don’t give me that look, you’re taking a shower too, buddy, before we share that tiny bed.”

“No, it’s not that, it’s just I think you forgot to call and cancel with Forrest.”

“Ah, it’s fine. It was a pretty informal meet up, a same place, same time type of plans with friends,” Alex commented, completely unconcerned, before he pushed himself upright with one hand to grab at the corner of the shower cubicle to hop into the basin. “Now come over here, and get cleaned up with me.”

***

Michael laid on the tiny mattress as still as possible the next morning. He was back to being warm again, but not the uncomfortable inferno of before. As his dreams that lately were all of his mother faded away, instead of the insubstantial sadness enveloping him, he had warmth. Alex. Alex wrapped around him like a cuddly octopus, the heavy weight around Michael’s waist holding him close, sleeping on his side with his right thigh and knee wedged up over Michael’s, to spoon him tightly on the tiny bunk. Despite the ticklish breath on Michael’s neck, he was loath to move from this refuge of strong arms.

As was his custom, Alex was between Michael and the door, a habit that was half old paranoia and half new consideration for his mobility needs in the small Airstream. After they had both cleaned up in the cramped shower closet, it had only taken the mildest pleading glance from Alex for Michael to pull on a pair of jeans to retrieve both an overnight bag from Alex’s Explorer and pay for a delivered pizza.

Full of greasy hot food and clean, his body wrung completely empty from their earlier exertions, Michael had spent the rest of the evening in a calm and close to meditative state while Alex had taken over directing his actions. Shower, eat, lay down, let me hold you, all easy instructions to follow as long as Michael didn’t think about what was coming next.

The twelve hours of caution had expired, and Michael had truly run out of borrowed time and excuses for Alex to stay.

Staring at the tiny leak of light, streaming through the taped newspaper and worn blinds, Michael couldn’t help but remember the last time they had shared this narrow bunk together. He had had hope then, that the dance between them would be different, with the Air Force on the brink of letting Alex go and with Alex showing all the signs of being interested in Michael again. Showing up at his trailer after the eviction notice, then dropping by Sanders’ after closing, ending every encounter breathless and shaking with pleasure after sex before it had finally culminated in that morning where Alex had stayed the night. 

The cliff dive of disappointment after the drive-in benefit was hard to forget. Not that he could entirely blame Alex for that, he had done a good amount of building up expectations in his head for what it had all meant to Alex without taking into account the hold Jesse still had had on him. Later on it didn't matter, because there was Maria and Caulfield. One moment bled into another until it was a million different decisions he had made trying to make a life that didn’t hurt to live, all of it in vain. 

Sometimes he thought he might have had it right when he said to Isobel that love was the worst thing that ever happened to him. He was the hopeless fool, marching into battle under the banner of love, and always finding himself unarmed, outmatched and outgunned. Maybe he should just surrender. What did the fight get him?

 _“That I loved you, and I think that you loved me.”_ At least Alex had eventually stopped using the qualification of ‘I think’. 

_“I don’t doubt your capacity for love, 'cause you made me so happy this year. And I loved being someone that made you happy-”_ He was back to the past tense again, after he had tried so hard to be what Maria wanted. He could love people, great, he just couldn’t love them in the way that made them want to stay. 

The common denominator here when he examined his failures was pretty obvious. Ah hell, that was his dark companion speaking poison into his thoughts again. The reprieve he’d had, under the boiling heat and intoxicating spell of Alex, was gone. 

As he felt Alex slowly awaken behind him, Michael tried not to tense under his possessive hold, instead just soaking up these last moments. Hearing Alex’s husky soft voice murmur, “You’re awake,” sent another echo of that morning before Isobel’s interruption through Michael.

Turning over to face Alex’s sleepy dark eyes, Michael discarded his old reply, of ‘you stayed’ and settled on the less weighted words of, “I’m awake.”

“Guess we survived the exposure.” Alex reached for Michael’s face easily, running his finger over the frown marks Michael’s forehead with a gentle tease, “You can stop worrying now.”

“Can I? I don’t know if that’s possible for me when it comes to you and me.” Michael reached up to capture and hold Alex’s hand against his face for a long moment, before releasing him with a weary sigh. “I kinda have a track record of messing things up, exposing us to an aphrodisiac is just a new low.”

Alex blinked, more clarity coming into his face, still lined with creases from the pillow. “You know, I had two thoughts when I woke up.” He looked ruefully at Michael, “First was I that needed coffee, but the second, was about that morning. With Isobel and her bagels. That’s on my track record with messing up with you.” 

“I was thinking about that morning too.” Michael wrestled with his thoughts, warring with the urge to push the hurt down as unimportant. He drew a bit of courage from Alex’s soft admission, that the topic of the past was open for discussion. “That hurt. How we were back then. Secretive. I… I should have said something sooner to you, that’s on me, but I had been in survival mode for so long, I just thought I had to take what little I could get and be happy with it.”

“I wasn’t in a place where I could have heard you, Michael, but I am sorry. I’m ashamed of how I treated us back then. You deserved better.” 

The sincerity of Alex’s apology, offered at the scene of where the harm had been done, brought the burn of tears to Michael’s eyes. He hadn’t realized how badly he needed to hear that from Alex. There was an old insecure thread that got tugged on, unravelling more whenever he saw just how much Alex had changed in the last few months with freely and openly dating Forrest. Those ghosts of how badly he had wanted that from Alex haunted him at times, increasing the volume of his howling demons, reminding him that he must not have been good enough for that treatment. The chorus of town whispers about being poor white trash, that had followed him through the foster care system and into the present day, with his criminal record the expected postscript on his story, often joined in as well.

He was still working to derail that connection of insecurity that led him to resentful anger, but Michael had the presence of mind to acknowledge that it hadn’t started with Alex. “I’m sorry too, for not being as understanding of what you were going through, or for pushing you past your comfort zone.”

Alex swallowed, his lips quirking in a small smile of acknowledgment. “Do you remember the song I performed after my dad died?”

Did he remember, what a question to ask. Did he remember the moment he figured out that not only was Alex past him on so many matters, but that if he didn’t start working on himself he might never catch up? The moment that Michael realized that even if he never got to be with Alex again, he would survive it knowing that at least Alex was happy at last? That maybe Jesse Manes had taken his mother away, at least he died knowing Alex was nothing like him. 

Of course he remembered the song, but perhaps leaving in the middle of it to break down in his truck and cry over those boys from the desert had given Alex the wrong idea. Michael cleared his throat, dislodging the rough hold of regret, and answered, “Um, the one you wrote about finding a home with someone?”

“The one I wrote about finding a home with _you_ ,” Alex corrected gently. “Maybe you didn’t hear all of the song, but there’s a line that is important. I know that with trauma and abuse, it makes you think in terms of tunnel vision. That everything must lead back to you. We both were hurt as kids, and we both took it out on each other in harmful ways. So with my song, I am saying, I don’t want to keep score with you anymore.”

“Alex,” Michael began, feeling the crush of hope fighting it out with his pesmissim. Something must have given him away because Alex stopped him with a finger on his lips. 

“If you’re not ready for what I want, that’s okay. It’s even okay if you’re never ready and just want to stay friends. Or um, even if you don’t want this at all. I guess it’s presumptuous to think that just because we had sex, you still- I mean-” Alex stopped, coughing out that overwhelmed laugh that Michael knew so well. It was comforting to know that even the new out and proud Captain Manes still could stumble over his words. 

Michael pursed his lips against Alex’s silencing finger and kissed it gently in encouragement. Alex laughed sheepishly, dropping his hand from Michael’s lips after a loving caress, and continued softly, “I probably should have said all of this to you before we had sex yesterday, but we were both kind of out of our minds on your sex potion and I wanted you to be clearheaded.”

The reference to yesterday brought to mind how toward the end Michael knew he was actively prolonging the encounter out of greed and it sent a pang of guilt through him. The pang was only momentary after Alex’s brave confession. Honesty deserved honesty in turn. 

“I want what you want, Alex, I just don’t know if I’ll be good at it, but after yesterday,” Michael paused, thinking about how safe and cared for he felt from Alex even in the midst of the high fever sweat. “That could have been awful, going through that, but it was you. There’s no one I trust like I trust you.”

“So you’re saying there’s no one else you would rather accidentally dose with a fuck-it-out serum?” Alex asked, his mouth curving into a smug smile as he scooted closer to Michael on the thin mattress.

“Ryan Reynolds, or Blake Lively, or um Ryan Reynolds _and_ Blake Lively but you are very close in the running.” 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Before Michael could do more than confirm it, Alex moved in for a kiss, only to be brought up short by Michael’s hand on his chest halting him in place. Michael could only be apologetically pained, ”You’re willing to try again, I don’t want you to regret it and if you kiss me before I can brush my teeth after cheap pizza, more importantly before _you brush yours_ -”

Alex laughed against the playful hold, but acquesied with a roll of his eyes. “All right, have it your way. I need to get up anyway. I think Kyle is working the morning shift, and I need him to do a quick blood test on me.” At Michael’s sobered expression, he quickly reassured, “Just to make sure your little experiment doesn’t pop up on a pee test by the Air Force.”

“Aren’t those randomly assigned?”

“Sometimes it’s a little more random than others when you’re the son of Jesse Manes.” He pressed a soft kiss to Michael’s forehead in concession to their morning breath, before sitting up on the bed and swinging his thighs over the edge of the bed. Leaning down to grab his leg, he started unrolling a new liner, “Listen, once I get my results, I’ll call you, so we can… talk more about this. I know you probably have doubts-”

“My doubts are about me, not you,” Michael stated, propping himself up on the bed to watch Alex dress with interest. “But I want to try, so call me when you can, okay?”

After dropping another quick kiss against Michael’s stubbled cheek, Alex finally left. Optimism and hope fit easily on Michael’s shoulders in the short term, he was used to believing in the moment that things would work out. Love held the exemption on his distrust, and he would always love Alex. It was always further down the path, when the markers on where to go were further apart and harder to read that Michael would lose his way and falter. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fall out... of all kinds.

Michael was deep under the front of a beat up farm truck that desperately needed a rebuild of its abused 30 year old diesel engine, his cell phone carefully within eyeshot next to him in case he missed the ding of a notification, when Sanders broke his attention with an annoyed yell, “Kid! Earth to you, come in.”

“What, I’m busy! Workin’ for you, in case you forgot,” Michael griped from under the truck, not pausing from his work. He was nearly finished working the wrench on the rusted motor mount bolts, then it was just a matter of operating the lift to pull the engine free of the truck. The strain to reach the last bolt sent a loud complaint throughout his body, that worsened as he twisted on the creeper. Had it been any other ache, he might have reached for the acetone.

This pain was closely tied to Alex, to the bunker, to the unbelievable memory of what had happened and the even more unbelievable knowledge that Alex was still interested in more with him. The idea of blunting that reminder with the sweet embrace of acetone felt a little like blasphemy to him. 

“Yeah, yeah, don’t think I didn’t notice you disappearin’ into that damn bunker for most of yesterday.” Sanders stood next to Michael, nudging his protruding leg from outside of the trunk undercarriage. “My task has to do with that.”

“To do with what,” Michael replied absently as the final bolt came free. 

“The bunker. Didn’t you notice the HVAC going on the fritz yesterday? That racket it made was enough to wake the damn dead.”

The bolt in hand, Michael froze under the truck, thankful for the camouflage of the engine. He had no idea what expression his face was revealing, but it probably wasn’t good. He swallowed hard, rallying, “On the fritz, is that the technical term, old man?”

“No, kid, the technical term was the damper to the heating element got stuck, between exhaust and cool, probably flooded that space with heat until it finally broke itself into pieces. My guess is only the chiller is working currently, and that’s my damn technical diagnosis, smartass,” Sanders finished, with another nudge against Michael’s boot. “Now I did the courtesy while you were sleeping late, to drive into town and pick up a new damper, but I ain’t putting it in. You can do that.”

It didn’t mean anything, Michael decided. Whatever he had spilled during Liz’s call, apparently didn’t have the side effect of a fever. The first symptom that Alex had felt had nothing to do with the the ‘fuck it out’ serum as Alex called it, but Michael’s own carelessness in not noticing that HVAC’s malfunction was cooking them. 

But Michael had had other symptoms, right? And so had Alex. Any moment Alex would call with the news that his tox screen had come back briefly abnormal, but that he had some hacker way of avoiding a military drug test and then they could make plans for dinner. Low stakes, nothing special, just a cautious beginning for them both.

Using his telekinesis, he pushed the rolling creeper out from under the truck to look up at Sanders and his unamused, weathered face. “Do you remember what time that racket started yesterday?”

“I don’t know, late afternoon? Why? And how did you not notice the damn heat? That some alien thing, you enjoy being cooked like a 7/11 hotdog?”

“Oh yeah, all alien. In fact 7/11 hotdogs are a delicacy on my planet,” Michael joked, pushing himself off the creeper and pocketing his cell phone after a quick glance to confirm there had been no messages. He flipped the wrench in his hand, gesturing to the truck. “I’ve got another couple hours on this, but it should be good to go tomorrow. And ah, thanks for picking up the part for the bunker.”

“Don’t thank me kid, anything that keeps you out of trouble can only be a good thing. I figure if you’re down there tinkering, you’re not getting your ass whooped by the Long boy and sobering up in a cell.” Sanders cracked a smug smile, flashing a missing tooth, as he leaned in to drop innocently, “Remember our deal, only blowing a guy here, not blowing the place up.”

Michael dropped the wrench on his boot in shock, causing Walt to laugh in a rough, donkey-like bray. “I saw him leavin’ this morning kid, don’t deny it. You’re also movin’ a bit funny.”

“Forget what I said about thanking you.”

Sanders slapped his shoulder with another entirely-too-pleased-with-himself laugh and moved off toward the office. “Part’s in my truck, you’re welcome, Romeo!”

His cell phone was still silent. But that didn’t mean anything, Michael decided. Alex was probably caught up talking to Valenti, probably being bored to death by some glowing account of something Stef said or did to make fun of Kyle. 

Michael set aside those thoughts, holding onto the well-fucked feeling from yesterday, and went back to work lifting the engine and transmission from the truck with the engine winch. The job in front of him to clean, rebuild and replace the seals was time consuming, and delicate. It was the type of work that he could disappear into for hours without thinking about anything other than what he was doing. 

And that was exactly what he did. Once he finished the job, reinstalled the engine and did a short test drive, he moved onto the next task of repairing the HVAC unit for the bunker. It was harder to quiet his thoughts as he climbed up into the interior of the bunker in order to access the cooling unit. His phone remained silent, other than a text from Max letting him know he was working at the Wild Pony that night.

It was fine, Alex would call.

Sanders was right, as he removed the front housing plate protecting the fan, there were bits of the damper scattered in the tray and a frozen actuator motor at the root of it all. The marks of wear clearly showed how the door between heat and cool got caught, sticking hard on the heating element until it broke under the strain. Cooked like a 7/11 hotdog, he mused, and then chilled like a Slurpee machine, all of which followed his memory of events. 

A few more hours ticked by as he finished up the repairs to the HVAC unit and tested it. He used his telekinesis to finish cleaning his lab area for a second time, bagging and rebagging yesterday’s failure carefully before he set it in his truck to take to the hospital incinerator. A protocol that Kyle had insisted on during the Resurrect Max project for safety, made possible by Alex, who had provided cloned access badges. 

The final task, one self-assigned, was stocking a box of condoms and a bottle of lube down in the bunker. The final act of defiant hope in the face of reality. 

Michael shut off the lights and left the bunker to clean up from the day. Sometime after four in the afternoon, he realized Alex wasn’t going to call and by the time the dinner hour arrived, Michael had moved past anger, past disappointment and into resignation.

Sitting in front of his fire pit, with his single self-pity beer in hand, he glanced down at his messages. He had sent three earlier in the day. 

To Kyle: **Did you see Alex today?**

From Kyle: **Yes.**

To Kyle: **Is he OK?**

From Kyle: **He’s fine. Are you okay?**

Michael had left that question alone, because what the hell could he say without it feeling like either too much or too little in response. Instead he had opened up his text chain to Max, and sent, **“Raincheck tonight. Tomorrow. Sad 👽 Bastards Meeting at WP. I will buy the bottle.”**

*** 

After he had made his plans with Max, Michael had hunkered down in his chair to sleep under the stars, unwilling to face his bed that still smelled of Alex. Sometime after he finished naming a new star in the endless black velvet of the night sky as his mother’s home, and before he awoke with a new, less-distracting sense of discomfort from sleeping in his cheap plastic chair, he had a trio of messages from Alex.

Alex (1:15 am) : **I’m sorry.**

Alex (1:35 am) : **I should have called.**

Alex (2:30 am) : **we still need to talk.**

Michael scrubbed at his face tiredly, before stumbling into his trailer to plug in his phone to boost the dying charge. He stared at the apology for a while, drafting and deleting a million responses in his head before he settled on, “ **its fine. glad u r ok.”** His fingers froze on a further invitation, and thought back to the rough steps of being a better person he had worked out from reading an internet advice column. 

‘Be responsible for your own actions’, meant limiting some of his self-destructive vices so he was more aware of where his anger originated from. He had tried maintaining a healthy boundary with both Isobel and Alex, with limited success. For a wild moment, he thought about calling Isobel and taking up her offer of going out to pick someone up, but that was too heavily tied into being self destructive while things were still so unsettled with Alex. 

Maybe Liz had a point about talking to someone about his issues, since he felt completely out of depth and he doubted there was a Dear Prudence letter that covered all the facets that made up his relationship history with Alex. Love, sex, trauma, more sex, more trauma, and for a while the cycle had been broken, but only because they kept to the platonic side of intimacy. He wasn’t sure where ‘believing a lab accident had exposed them to some unstoppable aphrodisiac but it was really just a faulty heater’ fell on the scale of trauma but judging from how Alex reacted to the reveal, it had to be on there somewhere.

Definitely out of his depth to figure out without help. 

Michael left his phone charging in the trailer, and turned his attention back to where it had all started, his bunker lab. The problems he had been working on were still there, like Jenna’s headaches. Like the block on his memories from his pre-pod days. Unlike what had happened with Alex, he was confident he could find a concrete solution to them with enough time and care.

***

 **“** A single light beer?” Maria greeted Michael warmly later that evening after he waded up to the bar. Before he could correct her from his usual order, she frowned slightly and ran her eyes up and down his face searchingly. The quick jolt of panic and alarm hit Michael as he realized she was using her psychic gifts on him, and the next feeling he had was sickness and guilt, that something she loved, something that was so deeply connected to her identity, was destroying her bit by bit.

He had more than a passing familiarity with that struggle himself, and all he could do for her now was to crush the feeling inside, to shield her from the obsessive worry he had, as he tried not to picture the alien roots that were behind a little more of her brain faltering. Maria did not appreciate his paranoia and concern about her cognitive ability. 

Of course, his success at hiding his emotions was still batting in the negative numbers as her frown deepened based on what she was picking up from him, “Oh no what’s wrong, Michael?”

“You, doing that thing, right now is what’s wrong,” Michael answered mildly, sweeping off his hat to rest it on the bar counter. “We talked about this, Deluca.”

She swatted at him lightly with her bar towel, “I’m not reading your aura, I’m reading your face. You look terrible.”

“Fell asleep outside last night, I must be getting too old to sleep in a chair.”

If anything, his mostly truthful response only deepened the lines of concern on Maria’s face. Her kindness, never hidden in her eyes, was one of the things he loved best about her. She knew immediately what sleeping outside meant, and who had been on his mind. Laying a hand over his gently, she reached out with empathy, “Thinking about your mom again?”

“Yeah,” Michael acknowledged roughly, and turned his palm over to squeeze Maria’s hand. “Even though I know she’s not here anymore, she kind of is when I look at the stars. If you think about relativity, and the speed of light, there’s a sun shining on her in our sky where we’re all still together as family. Where I still have a mom.” The memory of unconditional love flitted just out of reach as it always did, like quicksilver. He took a deep breath, and pasted on a smile as he worked to push the grief back down, “So I’m meeting Max for our usual, and it’s my turn to buy, so can I have a bottle of Wild Turkey and two glasses?”

To her credit, Maria took the subject change easily, and reached for the bottle after Michael placed a pair of twenties on the bar to cover it. “Another meeting of the sad,” she lowered her voice appropriately, “alien bastards club? I would have thought you would have canceled it after what happened yesterday.”

Blood drained from Michael’s face at her comment. Never in a million years did he imagine Alex sharing what had happened in the bunker with Maria, best friends or not. Michael scanned the bar briefly for Max, wondering if he could just take the bottle and run to the nearest deepest darkest hole to throw himself into. Perhaps he could see if Kyle would help put him in a pod, for the short expanse of forever. After running Alex’s blood tests yesterday and probably getting the same story as Maria, Michael figured the very ethical Dr. Valenti would bend even his rules about putting people who suck into eggs for Michael. 

“What happened yesterday,” he repeated numbly. This time Michael could believe that Maria wasn’t reading him, because all she did was smile widely at the echo and treated it as a question.

“I figured you had heard about Forrest and Alex breaking up yesterday.”

“Breaking up?” The relief that Maria wasn’t referring to what happened between him and Alex almost knocked him off his feet before Michael fully absorbed the last half of her sentence. “Um, Alex said they weren’t really dating, that it was just casual between them.”

A Cheshire cat smile stretched across Maria’s face as she leaned in to share the story, “Apparently Forrest was playing the long game, and he thought Alex would change his mind and fall in love with him. I didn’t hear the first part of their run-in, but nearly everyone in this bar heard the last part. He called Alex an asshole and a manipulative cock tease before I had my bouncer kick him out.” 

“Oh shit, he didn’t get violent did he?” 

“Nah, Forrest is from the dramatic side of the Long family tree, not the violent side. But still, no one calls my best friend names in my bar and gets to hang around to finish their drink, one of the perks of ownership.” She stacked a pair of shot glasses for Michael, and nodded over his shoulder toward the door where Max had just entered, “You should work on Max, get him to talk to Liz before he’s the only member in the sad bastards club.”

“Err, what, only member, wait- me and Alex aren’t-”

Maria lifted her eyebrow at him, the expression of warning strong enough to cut Michael’s denial short. “Maybe you aren’t now, but you will be. And,” She smiled sadly, “that’s okay. Really. I had some time to come to terms with something Forrest Long just ran face-first into. Honestly I thought he was the smart one, the fact that he heard the song Alex wrote for you and still thought he had a chance? I think they might have made the wrong Long boy repeat the fourth grade.”

Slowly Michael moved away from the bar, balancing the bottle and glasses carefully, his mind on autopilot as he made his way to find Max in the corner booth. The bourbon made a heavy clunk on the table, as he slid one of the shot glasses across the table to Max with a push of his telekinesis before using both hands to peel the plastic and pop the seal of the whiskey eagerly. 

Max opened his mouth, but Michael held up his hand in a request for silence as he poured two quick shots for them each. He didn’t bother replacing the bottle, just held it in one hand and downed his first shot quickly. Tipping the bottle to fill up the glass again, he sank his second shot just as fast. The burn of the cheap alcohol tickled his nose, almost bringing tears to his eyes. Perhaps he was out of practice in this type of drinking.

“Bad day?” Max ventured, taking his own glass to sip lightly.

“Yeah. No. Maybe.” Michael filled his glass again, but left it full in front him, before leaning back against the worn booth cushion. “Jury is still out, I guess.”

“You wanna talk about it?” 

“Nah, I wanna be distracted. Tell me more about your memories about home.” 

Max eyed him warily after his request, before shrugging and launching into recounting his memories of being chained to an altar as a child, of Louise fighting someone to free Max, of the newest memory of running through a strange city clutching someone’s hand. Michael listened to him carefully, noting how joyful and excited Max was as he described the shape and feel of the hand holding his as a child. 

The tension between them had lessened dramatically after they had all learned that the only tie between everyone was a species deep bond, not familial one. Each of them lost and alone on their adopted planet. While he still felt a bit of jealousy regarding the Evanses adopting Max and Isobel into a safe, wealthy home, the toxic hold wasn’t as tight now for Michael.

Halfway through Michael’s own explanation of his research into increasing the power of Liz’s serum, a knock on their table interrupted him as his cell phone slid across the surface until it knocked against the knuckles of his hand. Michael’s jaw dropped open in shock as he took in Alex Manes standing next to the booth, his own face almost blank except for a tiny clench in his jaw. “You left your phone in your trailer. It’s very hard to reach you when you do that.”

“Yeah? I had it with me all day yesterday and not a word.” Michael smiled humorlessly, before gesturing toward Max across from him at the table. “Max here was able to reach me easily then. And about how long did it take for me to reply to your text? A minute? Maybe two?” 

“Probably closer to five. And hi Alex,” Max greeted easily, his head moving back and forth between Michael’s careful semblance of causal and Alex’s mostly composed state. Seemingly reading the tension in the air, he picked up the bottle of Wild Turkey to splash another shot into Michael’s glass and his own, before moving over to the wall in invitation. “Have a seat, have a drink.” 

“Thank you, Max, but do you mind if I talk to Michael alone?” Alex’s voice was even and polite as he addressed Max without taking his eyes off of Michael.

It was the enduring comedy, and probably tragedy, of Michael’s life that it took just a glance and a word from Alex to set his blood pumping in wildly opposite ways. Even as he waited to get his heart more thoroughly broken, the text exchange at two am apparently wasn’t complete enough for Alex, he couldn’t help but feel his cock hardening in his jeans from Alex’s cool assessing stare. Fuck his life that he was still so easily brought down by someone. By that man in particular. He could see Max looking at him curiously, and all Michael could manage was a slight shrug, letting him know it was fine to leave him alone with his ex. 

It was still a public bar, and Michael knew, despite the fireworks Maria reported yesterday with Forrest, Alex loathed causing spectacle and being a part of one. Kissing was his sole exception, and that had only come about after Jesse had been put in the ground permanently.

Max scooted to the edge of the booth, “Ooo-kay, I’ll catch up with you later then, Michael. Also, it’s time to forgive Iz, okay? Let her out of the doghouse, you know she’s sorry.” With those parting words, he reached to reclaim his still-full shot glass, only to be stopped in his tracks by Alex’s hand covering the glass. 

“Thanks for the whiskey.” It wasn’t a request from Captain Manes, who waited with thinly veiled impatience to take Max’s seat in the booth. Max stared at him briefly, visibly considering challenging Alex over his drink, before he laughed under his breath and moved away, However once Max was out of earshot, finding a friendlier slab of real estate at the bar with Maria, some of the confidence that Alex wore rebelliously in his shoulders faded away. 

After yesterday’s debacle, Michael was in no hurry to make this any easier on him. He gently rotated the full glass of bourbon between his hands, while he let himself have small peeks at Alex. Damn it, Alex looked so good, better than he had when he originally stopped by Michael’s bunker. Sad that at the time, Michael had considered Alex's original romantic evening plans with Forrest to have made his heart feel like it was in a blender, when in reality, it was the detour Alex had taken with _him_ in the bunker that was the true experience of life stuck on 'purée, coarse, grate'.

His dark hair was messy and slightly spiked again, the earring was back in, and instead of a blue-jewel-tone shirt, Alex had slipped on a black one, so thin it looked almost transparent in direct light. Between the familiar dark brush of stubble back on his face and the spicy hint of expensive moisturizer, Michael had to wonder whether perhaps Maria had misunderstood the explosion from yesterday between Forrest and Alex. 

This wasn’t the look of someone broken-hearted, this was the look of someone who was back in the relationship game.

“I didn’t know you were fighting with Isobel,” Alex commented softly, before downing the shot of bourbon that Max had ‘left’ behind. 

“It’s nothing, I’m trying to get over it,” Michael glanced back down at his hands, weighing the decision to have his third drink now that Alex was there. Did it count as personal backsliding if he did? He was probably already three miles down that road by downplaying his feelings about his sister to Alex. Already closing himself off and for what, there was no saving this encounter from pain. 

As a compromise with himself though, Michael sipped half of his drink and then blurted out, “She kept trying to get me to go out with her to pick up. And when I told her I’m not into that right now, she accused me of burying myself in bitterness and self-pity. That I look for reasons to be unhappy in the same way I manufacture stuff to be angry about.”

Anger tightened Alex’s face, that muscle jumping again in his jaw, as he picked up the bottle of whiskey to refill his glass. “I’m sorry.” 

“Ah, it’s Isobel. She’s never liked being told no, so she gets vicious when it happens. Some days I feel like I should have been raised as her twin, instead of Max.” 

“No, I mean yes, I’m sorry she said that, but I’m also sorry that _I said basically the same thing to you_.” Alex took a deep steadying breath, and caught Michael’s left hand in his, stilling it from fiddling with the glass on the table. “I thought that if I took ownership of that night in the shed, I could maybe protect you from the fallout and um,” Alex’s lips twisted in wry observation, “sometimes that ended up dictating to you how to feel about it. I shouldn’t have done that. If keeping your hand wrapped, helped you move on from what my dad did, then that’s good.” He squeezed Michael’s hand again in emphasis, “I just want you to be okay.” 

“Alex, your dad is gone. The shed is gone,” Michael gestured broadly with his free hand toward Alex’s outfit, not daring to pull away from his hold, “I love that you’re living your life free and clear of that. I never wanted you to blame yourself, or be stuck back there.”

“Do you feel free with him dead?”

The question robbed Michael of air for a minute as he gaped a bit like a fish. There was a ring of history in that question, as if Alex was quoting someone and all Michael could do was splash another finger of bourbon in his glass. He didn’t want to lie, not to Alex, but he was wary despite the apology, of bringing his feelings about Jesse Manes up in the conversation. 

_“God forbid I have faith in people who don’t give me a good reason to.”_

Alex nodded thoughtfully, taking that action as a sad confirmation. “Is it at all better for you? Yeah, I thought not and I should have guessed that, based on how things have gone between us.” 

“That’s not fair!” Michael burst out, a shade louder than he meant. This was the cruelest déjà vu. “I have been giving you space to be happy for weeks, Alex, weeks, because I didn’t want to bring you down. I was happy that he died, happy for you, really fucking happy for me, but after the dust settled, it didn’t fix me. I wish it had. Cause I really wanted to be good for you, to be able to support you.” He rubbed at his face wearily, pulling his hand away from Alex’s slack fingered grip. “Shit, you didn’t come here to talk to me about your dad. Um, what did you want to talk about?”

“I came here to apologize to you, and to explain what happened yesterday, which also comes with a different and separate apology and then I was planning on grovelling some or leave you alone for good, if that’s something you want instead,” Alex finished in a rush, his words coming out fast and close together, but with the pattern of a well-rehearsed speech.

Michael’s brain stalled a bit picking through the quick, run-on speech to understand it. It was too many apologies for something that Michael brought on himself. A taste of his own medicine, god knows he was due for that. He picked up his glass, swirling the rest of the drink thoughtfully, before swallowing it. “You don’t really owe me anything, Alex. I figured some stuff out yesterday too, and if anyone is owed an apology it’s you-”

“The tox-screen that Kyle ran came back clean for me and-”

“I know,” Michael bit out darkly as Alex blinked in surprise at his knowledge. He took advantage of the pause, to pour out a fourth drink. The warm soft feeling of bourbon had finally worked through his tolerance at last. “Part of what I figured out was the HVAC for the bunker went out sometime that afternoon. That fever that I thought was exposure was just a shitty flap between the heat exhaust and coolant cycle. So I get it if you,” Michael paused, fluttering his fingers in emphasis, “felt pressured to make some promise afterwards. Nostalgia’s a bitch, am I right?”

“Wait, let me finish,” Alex interjected, looking miserable as he did it. “Kyle thinks I was fine, because I am human but that you _were_ affected by it. The byproducts he found in my blood are benign only to humans, but are psychotropic to someone who is not.”

Maybe the fourth drink was a mistake as Michael attempted to gather his thoughts, “Psychotropic? You’re saying, what, I really was drugged and you weren’t?”

“Kyle’s not an expert in this, but he seems pretty confident you weren’t able to consent.” Alex stared straight ahead at Michael, looking like he was facing a court-martial. “You said the spill was related to Liz’s serum as some way of counteracting the butyricol side effects. Instead of traumatic memory being blocked, it looks like it was inhibitions, all of it keyed to your biochemistry through the serum. So I’m sorry- I guess I just got caught up with you wanting me again, and-”

“No, no you have this wrong-”

“Obviously I didn’t know you couldn’t say no in the moment-”

“Time out,” Michael cut his hands together in that sign, trying to derail the spiral of self-loathing Alex was in. When he thought about how he felt in the bunker, how he felt under Alex’s hands, surrounded by Alex’s scent, violated wasn’t the first word that came to mind, regardless of psychotropic influence. It was like a key fitting in a lock, turning easily, letting everything he felt for Alex out, without tripping over the past mistakes, over the reasons why he felt he didn’t deserve Alex. “Yesterday, when you didn’t call, it’s because you were freaking out about _this_ then?”

“I wanted to talk to you in person about it,” Alex replied quietly, before a pained laugh bubbled up, “I stopped in here for liquid courage and ran into Forrest.”

Rubbing the back of his head awkwardly, Michael nodded toward the bar, “I heard. Maria said she had him tossed after he got shitty with you.”

“All this time you considered him my boyfriend, and as it turns out, so did he. And you were also right, he thought we had a date that night and that I blew him off, which he wasn’t happy about, but when he guessed I blew him off for you. Well,” Alex winced in memory, taking another drink in reaction. The alcohol was starting to loosen Alex up into a bleak self-pity, as he veered onto the topic of Forrest. “I swear I was very upfront with him about what I wanted, that I wasn’t looking for something serious and I definitely wasn’t going to fall in love with him. I just assumed he agreed with me and that’s why he went along with it. I should have checked in more with him and his feelings, instead of just assuming. Anyway, and this is no excuse for not calling, but my head was a real mess afterward. I just lost a friend, all I could think about was all the times I called the shots with you and you went along with it even though you weren’t happy with it, then adding in those test results….”

“It kinda sucked, not hearing from you,” Michael admitted, before reaching for Alex’s hand again after he shrunk back in chastened misery from Michael’s disclosure. “Hey, my head went to some dark places too. I thought, maybe you wanted some payback, for when I left you swinging in the breeze when you wanted to talk.”

“No, no, Michael, that’s the past, okay? I don’t want to-”

“Keep score, I know. But you see? That’s my bullshit. I know you wouldn’t do that, that’s not how your mind works. I’m still a work in progress though, but I’m tryin’ okay?” He leaned across the table, summoning all the seriousness that he had for Alex to believe him. Lowering his voice for only his ears in the noisy bar, “I don’t feel like you took anything from me when we made love, you just gave me what I needed. I loved every minute of it, if that wasn’t obvious,” Michael wangled his eyebrows at Alex with a wink.

A hint of a blush shaded Alex’s cheeks, before his forehead furrowed with concern again. “Afterward, though, the way you were, kinda upset?”

“You mean when I cried like a baby all over you?” Michael finished with a light self-mocking smirk. “I lost it like that because I thought that was the last time and I wasn’t ready for it to be over.”

“I didn’t-” Alex corrected himself, “ _I don’t_ want it to be over either.”

That was a declaration, reminiscent of yesterday morning’s talk in the aftermath. Michael’s heart ticked upward, caught between hope and experience. Could it be different between them? Except who was he kidding, even the up and down of the last day wasn’t enough to extinguish that desire to follow wherever Alex wanted to go. That fire had started inside him when he was 17, and though the years and struggle might have banked the embers down to a faint glow, it still burned.

Picking up the mostly empty bottle of bourbon from between them, he carefully poured the final two shots. He picked up his glass, swirling the amber liquid before meeting Alex’s eyes, “I know you worried that I was compromised in the bunker, but that next morning, I had never been more clear-headed and hopeful that we were making a fresh start.”

“Were. Did I ruin it with my freak out?”

“Did _I_ ruin it with my pessimism?” he countered in turn. “That’s my worry, because of course I still want to try again with you, but I am going to have moments where I believe the worst in people. That I might believe the worst in you because I can’t always see why you love me and it’s not fair to you to put your love on trial. You deserve the world, Alex.” 

Alex licked his lower lip nervously, taking another deep breath, as if to brace himself for the letdown. He reached for his glass in turn, starting the shuffle over to the edge of the booth and gathered himself to leave. 

“Well I had to try-“

“But your song-“ 

The two of them talking over each other, in opposite directions. 

With the shot glass resting against his lips, Alex froze, letting Michael continue.

“The part about meeting in the middle… can we do that? While I work on my stuff?” Michael offered with a tentative smile to Alex, who blinked in a slow growing optimism as Michael’s words registered. After the barest second, Alex gasped in acceptance and grabbed onto Michael’s hand. Ignoring the din of the crowded bar, Michael leaned across the table and paused, looking at Alex’s lips meaningfully then waited for Alex to close the gap. 

And he did. Threading his fingers through Michael’s hair, Alex lunged forward to kiss him deeply and unashamedly. 

It wasn’t the bourbon that made him light-headed as he accepted the outpouring of relief and promise in Alex’s kiss. This had been off-limits for them in the past, off-limits to him, and now. Michael could barely believe it was happening. A few more old wounds slowly closed and knitted together from the kiss. Reluctantly though, he broke away, staring at the wet shine of whiskey and his kiss on Alex’s mouth unabashedly. The table between them was probably a good idea; public kissing was one thing, public anything else was quite another. But seeing desire light up Alex’s eyes coupled with that sinfully tempting outfit that Alex wore was testing his control to the brink. 

Still, he wanted to enjoy this, out in public, so Michael held out his glass for Alex to toast against, “To us, then.”

“To us.” They clinked glasses together, drinking, with Alex wincing at last, “God, that’s disgusting. I can’t believe you drink Wild Turkey.”

“It’s the official drink of the sad alien bastards club,” Michael defended before smiling back at the judgmental eyebrow that Alex gave. “It’s vile, agreed, and now that you have poached the president, I guess Max is going to have to hold down the chapter all on his own.”

“At least until Liz comes home,” Alex glanced over toward the bar where Max was hunched over his drink. Maria was shaking her head at Max’s gesture for another, before retrieving a bottle of water instead.

Michael followed Alex’s gaze to his brother, and shrugged, “I don’t know if that will solve anything. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but their issues trump our issues by far. We’ve never lied to each other.”

“You lied once, you might have been trying to save my life at the time, but it still counts.”

The wave of grief crashed against him at the soft reference to Caulfield but it was a gentle wake this time, lapping against his heart, instead of washing over his head and swallowing all sight and sound in an undertow. Alex squeezed his hand warmly, reading the response easily as Michael’s eyes glistened with emotion, “Yeah, I guess so. You saw through me, and so did my mom. She said to me, ‘Take my love, take your love, and run’. I think she meant how I felt, but also who you were to me.” Michael picked up his hat, resting next to him on the seat, “I think I’m ready to come home to you.”

“I’d like that,” Alex replied, getting to his feet. He stood outside the booth, waiting patiently while Michael gathered their glasses and returned the empties and trash to the bar and then held out his hand for Michael to take. Michael used his hat tipped to the side to block the sight of Maria’s smug smile as they walked out of the bar together, hand in hand. 

Michael followed Alex out into the New Mexico night, stars spread generously over his head, but for once he didn’t think about guessing which one was home. His home was next to him, walking easily to his Explorer. All Michael had to do was follow in step, having walked to the bar earlier that night in anticipation of his plans with Max. He drew to a halt a foot from Alex’s car as a final thought hit him, “Before we go, I gotta know two things.”

“Yeah? I’m sober to drive you know.”

“I figured, but no, that wasn’t it.” Michael gestured up and down Alex’s body with a lazy flick of his fingers, “First of all, do you normally wear a basically see-through shirt when you’re apologizin’? Because that’s not fair and I think you know that.”

Alex smirked proudly for a second, before affecting a look of innocence. “I’m not sure what you mean, this was just what was clean.” 

“You’re such an asshole, and God, I love you.” Michael closed the distance between them, pressing Alex against his door playfully. That type of response had to be properly punished with a kiss, Michael decided. He couldn’t help but smile against Alex’s lips as Alex fought to keep a straight face before he surrendered gracefully under the sweet assault.

“I love you too,” Alex murmured breathlessly, looking very pleased with himself. He claimed another burning kiss from Michael, before drawing back to ask breathlessly, “What was your second question?”

“Second question,” Michael repeated as he tried to remember his train of thought from before, licking his lips from the kiss. He slid his hands under that silky thin shirt to find Alex’s smooth skin, wanting nothing more than to have him right there in the parking lot. That desire brought back his question. “When I call Isobel and make up with her, I want to tell her that I’ll go out with her on one condition, that I get to bring with me the person I want to go home with, if you’re game that is?”

“I’ll even wear this shirt,” Alex promised easily, pulling Michael into another kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm lambourngb @ tumblr .


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